iRAP’s Dr Steve Lawson recently received an AIRSO 50th Anniversary Road Safety Award in recognition of his significant and lasting contribution to road safety.

Steve Lawson’s work over 35 years includes research to reduce single-vehicle crashes and those involving young pedestrians, work on traffic cameras and red-light running, and supporting the development and application of protocols used by EuroRAP and iRAP.

AIRSO is a charity and independent membership organisation based in the United Kingdom and was established in 1965. The 50th anniversary awards were presented by Tim Stevenson OBE, Lord Lieutenant for Oxfordshire.

With iRAP’s online software, ViDA, you can now explore road safety Star Rating results for more than 6,000km of roads in India.

Additional assessments in Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh are also nearing completion, which will lift the total length to more than 10,000km.

Importantly, many of the roads assessed are linked with Government and World Bank financed upgrade projects that have a road safety focus. In fact, designs for some 20% of roads assessed are complete and construction is already underway on many roads.

Registering to use ViDA as a ‘Reader’ account holder is free and enables you to view high-level road data, Star Ratings and Investment Plan reports. Find out more by visiting: http://vida.irap.org.

The next IRF Safer Roads By Design Across Six Continents training program will be held in Malaysia from 15 to 25 March 2015.

One of the world’s most comprehensive road safety training programs, Safer Roads by Design helps road authorities meet their Decade of Action commitment to reduce fatalities by 50 percent by 2020.

The ten day program will include a session on using the iRAP methodology to systemically apply safety countermeasures. The session will involve interactive use of the Star Rating Demonstrator (available at http://vida.irap.org).

Find out more and register by visiting: https://www.irfnews.org/event/safer-roads-by-design-1503/.

iRAP is seeking a Senior Frontend Web Developer/UI Engineer to join our award-winning road safety team.

Based in iRAP headquarters in Basingstoke, UK, you will be part of the team that develops and supports iRAP software and systems, especially ViDA (http://vida.irap.org).

We have an extensive list of products in the development pipeline, including tools to help star rate road designs, integrated star rating, crash data and GIS systems, speed management tools and new ViDA modules that help explore how to create a fatality free road in combination with vehicle and other technologies.

Full details of the position, including a list of essential skills and desirable skills, are available here.

Brazil’s National Road Authority (DNIT) has begun an iRAP assessment of 3,000km of federal highways, spread across eight of Brazil’s 27 states and territories.

The project will be delivered by Mexican road survey firm, SEMIC, and the iRAP team, and provides an opportunity for DNIT to develop its capacity to use the iRAP methodology to assess and improve safety on its 60,000km road network.

As part of the project initiation, the Federal Highway Police organised a workshop that included Justice Minister José Eduardo Cardozo, Director General of Highway Police Maria Alice Nascimento Souza, Director General of the FIA Foundation Saul Billingsley and numerous international experts.

This project and assessments in Sao Paulo benefit from the support of the World Bank Global Road Safety Facility.

As the Make Roads Safe Hellas-led SENSOR project draws to completion, more and more of the 14 southeast European partner countries are publishing results and setting out plans for the next steps.

The project has produced Risk Maps based on historical crash data for more than 27,000km of roads, showing that 30% to 60% of networks have unacceptably high risk.

Almost 20,000km of infrastructure Star Ratings have also been produced. These show that typically 50% to 70% of roads in individual countries are 1 or 2-stars (out of 5-stars) for vehicle occupants.

Commonly, pedestrian activity is expected on more than 40% of networks, though sidewalks (footpaths) are generally only available on less than 10% of the networks. More than 4,800 pedestrian crossings were surveyed, 44% of which are of poor quality.

This presentation summarises the project.

Through the ANRAM program, state-based road authorities in Australia are increasingly using a nationally-consistent approach to identify and improve road sections with the highest risk of severe crashes.

In the State of Tasmania for example, the Third Action Plan for road safety will see improvement of Star Ratings for Tasmanian highways, and in particular, a lowering of the percentage of 1 and 2 star rated highways.

This action is part of efforts to promote the use of ‘best practice infrastructure’ and reduce serious injuries and fatalities by 20% between 2010 and 2015.

Minister for Public Works and Transport, HE Tram Iv Tek, and senior officials recently met with iRAP to discuss opportunities to prevent road trauma in Cambodia.

The World Health Organization estimates that Cambodia experienced a road death rate of 17.2 deaths per 100,000 population in 2010. We estimate that deaths and serious injuries cost $474 million a year, or the equivalent of 4% of GDP.

Speaking during the meeting, the Minister said deaths from traffic crashes accounted for much-needed attention and urged the Department’s road engineers to pay high attention to the quality and safety of the roads.

The meetings were held in conjunction with an OECD ITF Netherlands-Cambodia twinning project involving Road Safety For All, Handicap International and GRSP.